The Lady Who Flew Africa
 

On BBC 4 last night, concerning Tracey Curtis-Taylor's re-tracing the epic flight from Capetown to Goodwood by Lady Mary Heath in 1928.
A fine looking Stearman, with interesting shots of it taxiing incongruously past modern jet airliners. Worth a look!

Agreed. Fantastic programme, makes me want to go and do some bush flying! Some very sad scenes of rhino poaching though :(

Truly brilliant programme and I take my hat off to the lady. Her Stearman visited Blackbushe last year and I was lucky enough to get a snap:

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/...psmkg0agan.jpg

+1 on the poaching scene, made so very much worse by the fact that rhino horn is just matted hair and has no medical value at all.

Totally agree with previous post. Although I thought they may have been able to make it into longer program given the size of Africa and the bits which were missed so to speak. Also it would have been interesting to see a little bit of the flight through Europe given winter conditions / traffic.


Regards
Mr Mac

A phone call somewhat interrupted the last 20 minutes for me, but I agree that the subject could easily have made it at least a 2 part programme!

For anyone who missed it, look out for the repeat or perhaps check BBC iPlayer

Drift thread, but the way forward is to inject cyanide into their horns. It does not affect the animal but it sure does the end user if the Rhino is poached and the horn used for 'medicinal' purposes. The word will soon get around China.

Bush flying :ok: Doing some on Friday. Short strips, diving at the threshold over the top of tall trees, dodging birds in the air and animals on the strip. All VFR hands on stuff.

I am exhausted just thinking about it. Guess I was better off with auto land and miles of tarmac. It is a young guy's game. The old man will just sit back in the RHS and enjoy.

Ref the cyanide in rhino horns, aren't they starting to paint something onto elephant's tusks that is poisonous if handled? I seem to recall reading about it a few months ago, and it seemed an excellent idea.

By coincidence, Tracey was speaking at the RAeS Oxford Branch last night. Great talk, catch it if you can. She had her 'mate' with her, Dame Diana Rigg!

She says they have hours and hours of film in the can. Hope more of it can be shown.

^ True Entertainment (Freeview 61) is currently showing the Avengers at 8 pm on week days, but have now shown all the older ones including Diana Riggs' ones, and are now showing the Linda Thorson ones.

Fantastic programme! What occurred to me whilst watching was there must of been a chase plane doing the filming.

Any ideas what it would have been?

It was a C208 Caravan.
You see the odd shot of Tracy inside it when the Stearman had the Mag drop, and also fleeting glimpses of it parked at various airfields.
Tony

And it's shadow flying fairly close to the Stearman as they flew over the bush. Presumably that's how they got the "peeling off" shots.

It seems Mary Heath wrote a book about her journey. It's called "Women and Flying", but it's not readily available.

I thought it a fascinating programme and agree with Mr Mac that I also would like to have seen more.


Re the landing shown at Goodwoood. Was that the actual homecoming? I ask because I would have thought there would have been more of a welcome/recognition but also on the film shown, I am sure there was another person in the front cockpit so perhaps this was filmed on another occasion.

At the Oxford talk, Tracey said he regularly gave flights to people in the front seat - sponsors, helpers, friendly people, etc. I don't think it was billed as solo all the way, was it?

I thought it best to clarify a couple of the aspects of Tracey Curtis-Taylor's Spirit of Artemis flight from Cape Town to Goodwood.


She did 44 flights within Africa from Cape Town to Crete in Greece.

On 40 of these flights, she was accompanied by her instructor (20000+ hours, and the same man who (beautifully) rebuilt the aeroplane from scratch).

On two of the solo flights, she asked the C208 to fly slowly in front of her as she was worried she wouldn't find the destination airfield (despite having two moving map GPS in the cockpit).

She had three pilots doing all the flight planning and preparation, filing of flight plans etc. and a full support organisation for all the ground logistics.
In short, perhaps not the 'achievement' she seeks to portray - and certainly nothing compared to Mary Heath's story (or many others).


In 2015 she accepted the prestigious Light Aircraft Association's Bill Woodhams Trophy normally awarded for 'Feats of Navigation'.


I consider it unfortunate:
- That her flight was judged the winner for 2014.
- That she was prepared to accept it (as opposed to politely declining).
- That whoever was in 'second place' missed out on what should perhaps have been theirs?


Looking to set the story a little straighter before this goes into the history books...


Safe flights, Sam.

I've only just seen this thread. I thought it was going to be about Beryl Markham, flying in Kenya in the 20s. Her autobiography is "West with the Night". Wonderful book.

Now, SHE was an aviator!

Having just watched the repeat, I'm also disappointed in the filming itself. There was precious little detail about the plane, its restoration, about the massive mountain range she had to cross (how high? how cold?), how she navigated, and whole host of other details.

Now I read here that much of that stuff was taken care of for her.

While the in-flight shots were marvellous, there weren't enough of them. Sorry, but it just seemed like a wasted opportunity.

Disappointing.

Great scenery, beautiful aircraft and an excellent way to revive a forgotten feat.

However,

Although, to anyway who knows anything about aviation, it was obvious that there must have been a huge logistical backup to get the whole thing filmed and on budget. I was convinced that all the flying was done solo and the program gave no indication otherwise.
In the words of Sgt Wilson "Do you think that's wise Sir?"

Just wait til the Daily Mail gets hold of this they'll have a field day. :rolleyes:

Massive mountain range?

I was wondering about that...

I must admit that I enjoyed it, but it does now seem to have been somewhat Stage Managed!

I can't say that I was massively impressed with much but the filming either.

The lady presented well to camera, but to present as essentially her solo effort something where she was clearly leaving much of the difficult stuff to other people was rather disingenuous.

If there's a team, credit the team.

G

There was a comment in the documentary about needing to fly over a mountain range to get to Entebbe, I think it was.

I haven't seen the prog, but the nearest mountains (apart from ex-volcanoes) in central Africa are the Ruwenzori/Mountains of the Moon: nowhere near Entebbe. What there is though is a f***ing great lake.

I've probably mis-remembered the destination - but there was a shot of a mountain range from a distance, take-off, then an instant cut to the landing on the other side. Point was, it didn't really address the challenges or how they were overcome.

It definately said Entebbe because I was watching it with great interest as the route took in several countries where I have lived including Entebbe itself. I was also surprised when they mentioned a large mountain range because there isn't one. near Entebbe. The nearest big mountain is probably Elgon which is a hundred or so miles to the east of it. After watching it, I thought it was really quite poor, how can they fit in a flight from Capetown to England in 60 minutes? I am even more disappointed now after reading the comments about how it was done.
Concerning Rhino horn, a lot of it is, or was, used to make ceremonial coming of age daggers for Arab fathers to give to their sons.

I'll need to watch it again, but the mountain was probably Mt.Kenya (near to the Rhino reservation). So visited/seen but certainly not 'crossed'.


As far as credits are concerned, none of the support team are mentioned as they roll (I, personally, am happy as keen not be associated with it) but harsh on both C208 pilots (they obviously also helped hugely with all the pre-flight planning every day) and Ewald who actually flew nearly all of the flights with Tracey (and arguably without whom she'd have been unable to do it at all).

According to the Mail on Sunday, she's now intending to retrace Amy Johnson's flight from England to Australia.

Had a quick look. When the mountains are mentioned she is in Nairobi and there is a brief cut to a view across some tarmac towards a range of rugged hills. Certainly not Wilson with the Ngongs behind. I think the reference might be to crossing higher hills to the west of the Rift Valley - the commentary mentions her flying higher than she has before, given Nairobi is around 5000' ASL, it wouldn't take much for her to need to climb to 10000 or so.

FLYER Airportal - General Aviation News

And presumably also in her safety pilot and large support team?

G

She has gall, certainly - continuing to associate herself with past great aviators!


At least she's no longer using the word 'solo'!

I suspect that this is probably a classix integrity /understanding issue. The TV people, not fully understanding the significance of the word, probably started referring to this as solo. Herself then through either naivety or conceit, probably just failed to make them change that.

G

The lady herself was probably much more involved in the actual "doing", rather than the arcane practices of filming, post-production editing, commentary dubbing and addition of rolling credits. So it is in my view entirely possible that she didn't have the chance to see the finished production before it was broadcast, nor any directorial powers. My own very limited experience of film production crews is that they can be a law unto themselves with regard to the end product.

Having said that, I read through this thread first before watching the film on iPlayer, and thoroughly enjoyed it, notwithstanding! Having worked or holidayed in several of those marvellous African locations, I was quite spellbound from start to finish. I have no carping criticisms to make, and have some respect for the lady's personability and chutzpah in what were clearly not easy circumstances at times.

That's entirely possible. Whilst I've learned to be pretty forceful about how I, and what I say, can be represented - in half a dozen documentaries and a lot of news programmes, I've yet to ever see the final edit before it goes out, and certainly my opinion is seldom sought on the topic by those in charge of production.

G

Q & A with Tracey Curtis Taylor - Features - Pilot




If you hadn’t been flying solo, who would have been your ideal co-pilot?



Although this was primarily a solo flight, certainly at the outset, I often took members of the crew and sponsors with me in the Stearman for reasons of expediency or indeed just so that they could share the experience.




To confirm, 40 out of 44 flights were with her instructor...


Even on her own website she talks of her 'solo' flight.


In Kenya, both the sponsors and TV company had to formally ask her to stop using the word 'solo' - not the other way around.


Still, good to see she's calming the 'solo' rhetoric at least a little, finally.

This will make an interesting comparison......


North Cape to Cape Town in a dH.60 Moth

Apropos my earlier post about Beryl Markham, I received an email today about a novel that has just been published:

Circling the Sun: a novelist's vivid portrait of Beryl Markham | The Seattle Times